The picture book we will talk about in this blog is called The Rainbow Flower. (To view the book, please follow the following link: http://wenku.baidu.com/view/49ae1cb269dc5022aaea0053.html?from=related&hasrec=1)

The first thing we love about this book is its simple pictures with bright colors. Children are attracted to the pages once the teacher opens the book. Every two pages feature one color and one animal with no other distracting elements. When going through the book, there are chances to repeat the animal names and colors several times which makes it a perfect book for teaching colors and animal names.

The second significant merit of this book is its repetitive structure which can be adapted flexibly to the needs different levels of learners. For beginning learners, the whole book can be interpreted with the following conversational structure:

“‘小花小花, 你可以不可以给我一片花瓣？’‘可以，可以。’***拿着*色的花瓣走了。” (“Little flower, little flower, would you please give me a pedal of yours?” “Sure.” *** went away with the *** pedal.)

On the other hand, for more advanced learners, the book can be interpreted with a more complex descriptive structure such as:

“***想问小花要一片花瓣，小花给了***一片*色的花瓣。***拿着*色的花瓣开心得走了。”(*** wants to ask for a pedal from the little flower. The little flower gives a *** pedal to ***. And *** went away with it happily.)

Children are not bored when reading the book for the second, or even the third time. With older immersion children, usually beginning from the fourth time, it is the time for the teacher to let students guess which animal comes on the next page, and what the color of the pedal the animal takes is. Students get very excited with the guessing game and therefore it is very natural for them to produce the colors and animal names in Chinese.

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas